have cleared the road to the discovery of that which he was not-that which he could not do. It is nothing to me whether Mr. Carlyle admits the second position or not-nothing to me whether he would utterly repudiate it, and call me a quack or a sham for proclaiming it: I care nothing for that. He may not be the least obliged to me, but I may be deeply obliged to him for delivering me from an error which I had before, and for enabling me to see a truth, which I had before, more clearly. So, again, in respect to Cromwell: I believe the right acknowledgment of his power is the clue to understand the cause of his impotence. "He could not execute the christian religion," says Mr. Carlyle, in his last book, "and therefore his body swung at Tyburn." Just so, the thought that the spiritual life in man was everything; that everything which was not this, was not the christian religion; that everything that was not this, was to be taken away. And he found that he could not execute this idea, for it was not the idea of Him who promised to send the Spirit to guide men into all truth, and who said that the Spirit would not testify of itself, but of Him. He never set the spiritual life in man above that fixed and eternal truth of which the man who had the life becomes a partaker. He had appointed fixed and permanent ordinances, to be the witnesses of this truth. The man who would have the life without these, could not "execute" his religion. The phrase may be strange, but it is a happy and significant one. So, lastly, is it with Rousseau. He did exercise a mighty influence over the minds of men; but we have Mr. Carlyle's testimony, that the constitutions which were based upon the Social Contract "could not march." He has shown us--no one so well-what kind of thing that nature proved itself to be, which Rousseau would have made the lawgiver of the universe. These facts, too, have need to be accounted for; and having learnt that Rousseau's strength consisted in asserting that there is something which is above artifice or convention, we are driven to conclude that this something must be a higher order, a higher life; this higher order, this truer life, being that which is indeed intended for man, and proper to man, but which ceases to be his when he becomes a worshipper of nature, instead of a worshipper of Godwhen he sets up himself, instead of crucifying himself.

Sir, these conclusions seem to me not at all less valuable because they evolve themselves quietly and naturally out of facts not produced for the purpose of establishing them-out of principles apparently remote from them; and I believe, in like manner, that no statement which the reviewer, or which I could make, of our conviction that the different sides and forms of faith are all contained in the one faith which the Church embodies or the Bible sets forth; that the different Heroes of the world demand a central Hero, who shall be an actual historical Person, who shall concentrate the scattered rays of goodness and power, who shall be one with Humanity and above it; could equal, in moral force, the evidence which a book like Mr. Carlyle's affords, of the necessity of some truth in which all truths shall find their meeting-point and reconciliation; of that truth being not an abstraction, but one which has been embodied in a person; not a congeries of notions, but the foundation of the bond of human life and human society. Not only in those words which indicate the continual

feeling after such a centre, but quite as much in those which seem to deny the existence of it, or to substitute some vague, unreal centre for it, does this necessity make itself apparent. And this, I conceive, may be the Præparatio Evangelica of our day. To one who has passed through it, we may present our Gospels as they stand, and say, Here is He in whom we believe; here is One who actually lived and suffered; here is strength perfected in weakness; this is He that should come-we need not look for another.

It seems to me, sir, a very serious question, whether it is a safe or light thing to check, by any influence of ours, this kind of evidence from finding its way into the minds of our countrymen. Other kinds of evidence, it is quite clear, have worn themselves out; they are not only ineffective, they actually destroy the effect of that which they profess to recommend to us, and force upon us. And yet I do not think that mere Church authority-the mere saying " So it is," can be felt by any one to be a substitute for this evidence. The question always recurs, What is? Not, surely, these words which you utter, but that which these words speak of: and how to get men to feel this, to know this, is the difficulty. What a difficulty! Oh! if by any process of doubt or despair it might be overcome; if we might be goaded into realities, compelled to grapple with them, by feeling this solid earth, and the goodly canopy of heaven, nothing but a congregation of vapours! This will be worth our while; but it is better, surely, to meet with one who does not lead us into mere scepticism, who is always looking for something solid; always promising himself, and encouraging others, to believe that it does exist, and may at length be found. What if he does not say confidently that it has been foundif he sometimes insinuates the contrary? The state of mind into which he brings us-it is at least charitable and comfortable to suppose the state of mind in which he is himself-is not one which will quarrel with the source whence the light came, provided it be the light he needs; not one which could say the light must be a delusion, because it looks out from the stars or the sun, not from a glass mirror or a gas lamp. And it is a sad thought to many of us, that, being confident we do know of a light shining from the heavens, which is just what the pilgrim over the earth needs, we have not made it manifest to him, by walking in it, rejoicing in it, proclaiming it; but have led him to think it was no better than some flickering farthing rush candle kindled by ourselves.

Sir, I know well the ready answer to this statement: "It is all very fine to talk of discovering these truths, or helps to truths, in Mr. Carlyle's writings; but does one in six readers discover them? and are not reviews written for the five in six, not for the one in six? And have not these five need to be warned of a teacher who will assuredly deceive them, whatever benefits he may be fancied to confer on the lucky transcendental individual?"

There is one point in this argument of a delicate nature, which I would rather pass over; but, as I have committed myself so far, I will speak my mind upon it-I mean the office of christian reviewers. What the office of the worldly reviewer is we all know; to detect all the faults which he can in a book or a man; to show how little good can be said of him-especially, if he be a man of thought, or

genius, or moral influence, to show how much evil is in him. I should have ventured to think that the christian critic was not merely to apply these same principles to a different class of writings or persons, but to act upon entirely different principles. I should have thought that he was especially bound to use the loving powers with which he is endowed, for the purpose of bringing to light that which is good in every work or person who is able to exert any influence over his countrymen, for the very purpose of making that influence beneficial of confounding and discomfiting anything that is evil in it. I should have thought (and here I do not wholly speak from guess; I am not simply casting stones at others less guilty than myself,) that any one who had failed in doing this, who had been tempted to write or speak upon any other maxim, would find cause for frequent and repeated self-reproach and repentance; would feel that he had wronged his own mind, and not only the minds of others, because perchance he had few or no listeners. But, waiving these points, upon which I have been over bold in touching, I should like to inquire who those five in six readers are, for whose especial benefit Churchmen think it needful to adopt the practice of the world. Are they, in this particular case, persons who are already readers and admirers of Mr. Carlyle? The probable effect of such criticism will be to convince them that Churchmen have no sympathy with that which they have felt to be true and useful to themselves; whatever, then, they have heard which is disadvantageous to the Church and its ministers, will be strengthened and deepened in their mind. To this part of their author's creed they will cling: what qualifies it they most likely reject. Or are they persons already disposed to be afraid of this author, with a very sufficient and reasonable horror of him; these are the very men to whom he could not do mischief- to whom he might do much good; men who, if they are to be worth anything as Churchmen, require to be sifted and winnowed, lest haply, in the day when a mightier winnower appears, they shall be found chaff and not wheat. So that this kind of reviewing, which is studiously contrived for the majority, and not for the minority, has the merit of discountenancing the best, encouraging the worst in every class of that majority.

As far as my own experience has gone, the warmest admirers of Mr. Carlyle are to be found among very simple people, women especially, who love their Bible above all other books, and would hate any which did not lead them to love it more. Such persons, with that faculty of love which so far excels the merely judicial faculty in subtlety and discrimination, have detected something at the heart of his writings which reached into their deepest faith and convictions, and have thrown aside, as wholly extraneous, or at all events as unintelligible, what seemed to contradict them. You may tell such readers that they have been all wrong that you know better; but you will not easily convince them. Not pride, not self-will, but genuine humility, self-distrust, affectionate charity to that which has imparted wisdom, are enlisted against you. Your arguments, and criticisms, and sneers, will not seem to them the least in accordance with the spirit of the Bible or the Church; they will still obstinately declare that Mr. Carlyle has done more to give them a delight in what is

living and true, and, threrefore, into the Bible and the Church, than you have. Might it not be well to enter into such prejudices a little; to inquire the meaning of them; to see whether they are wholly

monstrous.

But I must conclude this long letter. I hold no brief from Mr. Carlyle; he would not thank me for my advocacy. I am jealous, not for his honour, but for that of the body to which I belong; I am sure that it is the body in the world which ought to acknowledge and love truth wherever it manifests itself; the one body which, if it understand its own rights and persons, could afford to do so. How long will its members treat it as a sect, while they boast of it as a Church? how long will they hold that its power is shown in rejecting and denying, not in embracing and harmonizing?

I am, my dear Sir, your obedient servant,

F. MAURICE.

[Every thing from Mr. Maurice's pen is sure to be both interesting and important; and therefore we rely on our readers at once justifying us for such a departure from our rules, as is involved in admitting into our pages anything like discussion upon our articles, and acquiescing in the declaration which we now make, that the proceeding is not to be regarded as a precedent. It appears to us, we own, that Mr. Maurice over-rates the difference between his and our estimate of Mr. Carlyle. In most of what he has said we cordially coincide; and he admits that there are elements in Mr. C.'s mind and speculations, which he will not deny to be very dangerous ones. If so, are we not to point out the dangers? Do none of the admiring readers of "The History of the French Revolution," "Chartism," "Hero-Worship," &c. with whom he comes in contact, require to have it pointed out to them that fine religious sentiment is not Faith; and that while we are indulging in the one, we are under a very peculiar danger of forgetting the other? Are there no hero-worshippers in whose eyes Genius is all but infallible, and who must be made to see that there is but one Law for man, whether richly or poorly endowed; that the richest gifts of Genius are turned into curses by those who use them as means of separation from their brethren, and that the differences between man and man are as nothing compared with the links which ought to unite them? Is it safe to allow hero-worship to be turned in the direction of a Rousseau, without one word of protest?

We entirely agree with Mr. Maurice, that it is the office of a christian reviewer rather to seek for and draw out the good there may be in a writer, than to show up all the evil: but he has probably not seen our former article on the Hero-Worship, in which we endeavoured, however unsuccessfully, to discharge this duty. He, however, has done it far better than we have, and, cordially thanking him for his interesting and valuable observations, we leave them to take the place of our former article, and, instead of that, to be combined by our readers with our latter one on Carlyle, which we still think to have been much called for; as we do not believe the number of persons who have "a very sufficient and reasonable horror" of this author, to be nearly so great as Mr. Maurice imagines.]

PREFERMENTS.

Abraham, T. E.... (Trinity Ch., Bicker- Chester...... Earl Derby.......